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The biggest stumbling block in my genealogical research is one of my maternal great-grandfathers. As my mom's cousin put it, "nobody knows where he came from, nobody knows where he went" - he never spoke about his past, and he was on the outs with all his children and grandchildren when he died so the nursing home he was in handled his cremation and as far as anyone knows discarded his ashes with his belongings.
I found where he came from. I had found a record of marriage before my great-grandmother - his name is common, but his parents' names are not, and he had given them on later paperwork. He had apparently married a young widow with a child, and then absconded on them shortly thereafter... darn him. But this was in New York City - and someone pointed out to me, New York City has all their records in an online archive!
The New York City archive record had more information than was indexed on any of the genealogy sites: namely, the church and officiant where the wedding had taken place. Astonishingly, it was a Catholic church - I suspect him being Catholic would come as much of a surprise to the children and grandchildren as him having had a previous marriage. But usefully: the Catholic church are punctilious record-keepers.
It took a while, but the Archdiocese of New York sent me an image of the entry in their marriage book. It gave his birthplace: Brieg, Schliesen (Silesia), Germany - now Brzeg, Poland, which probably explains why we had so much trouble finding any records of him in Germany! There's even a chance that the Mormons have scanned some relevant church and civil records (although it's a small chance; they've had a couple wars there, and a lot of places that are now in Poland destroyed records from when they were part of the German Empire).
(If I were a Beloved Celebrity doing my episode of Who Do You Think You Are, ancestry.com would run a 45-second segment about the geopolitics of southwestern Poland and then put me on an airplane. Alas, I am a peon, and must rely on the LDS Family History Libraries.)
...and I'm also kind of sad about finally finding him, because I am *so excited* and I want to tell my mom and my aunt and they're not here for me to tell.
I found where he came from. I had found a record of marriage before my great-grandmother - his name is common, but his parents' names are not, and he had given them on later paperwork. He had apparently married a young widow with a child, and then absconded on them shortly thereafter... darn him. But this was in New York City - and someone pointed out to me, New York City has all their records in an online archive!
The New York City archive record had more information than was indexed on any of the genealogy sites: namely, the church and officiant where the wedding had taken place. Astonishingly, it was a Catholic church - I suspect him being Catholic would come as much of a surprise to the children and grandchildren as him having had a previous marriage. But usefully: the Catholic church are punctilious record-keepers.
It took a while, but the Archdiocese of New York sent me an image of the entry in their marriage book. It gave his birthplace: Brieg, Schliesen (Silesia), Germany - now Brzeg, Poland, which probably explains why we had so much trouble finding any records of him in Germany! There's even a chance that the Mormons have scanned some relevant church and civil records (although it's a small chance; they've had a couple wars there, and a lot of places that are now in Poland destroyed records from when they were part of the German Empire).
(If I were a Beloved Celebrity doing my episode of Who Do You Think You Are, ancestry.com would run a 45-second segment about the geopolitics of southwestern Poland and then put me on an airplane. Alas, I am a peon, and must rely on the LDS Family History Libraries.)
...and I'm also kind of sad about finally finding him, because I am *so excited* and I want to tell my mom and my aunt and they're not here for me to tell.
